How to Get and Use Google Slides Templates for Free?

November 26, 2021

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This time, let’s get a custom Google Slides template and then edit it ourselves. We recommend you study this manual carefully and start practicing!

How to Get and Use Google Slides Templates for Free?

Checklist of crucial points we aim to highlight here:

Signing into the Google Account
Searching the Templates
Downloading the Template
Editing the Template
Animating the Object #1
Animating the Object #2
Applying the Transition

Let’s go and get a custom Google Slides template and then edit it. Simply a Google Slides template from any other source except those common ones on Google Docs and except making one on your own.

Watch the video from https://thegoodocs.com/ and learn How to Get and Use Google Slides Templates for Free:

Signing into the Google Account

First, let's quickly make sure we are signed into the Google account. Head to google.com in your browser. And here on Google's homepage, drag your mouse cursor to the top right corner of the screen where here you check whether you are signed in or not

If you are signed in, you will see your profile picture or an icon with a person if you don’t have it

If you are not signed in, you will see such a button suggesting to sign in. So, we press it

Now here we enter either our email address or a phone number linked to the account. We’ll use our email, which is [email protected]. And then we press Next down here

On this next page, we are entering our password. And so are you. And then press Next over here

We are redirected back to the Google homepage. But now we are signed into our Google account that you can always check by looking at the top right corner here. If you see either your profile picture or an icon with a person, it means you are signed in

Searching the Templates

Now from here, we go to the website with Google Slides templates or search them in Google from right here “the goo docs free templates”

Scrolling down and skipping the advertisements, and here’s the website https://thegoodocs.com that we press on

And we got to its homepage. We are not going to go too far here. We will modify the essential and popular one, for example, the Old Times Newspaper

NB! But keep in mind that the range of templates here is huge. And you can find here hundreds of newspapers and other Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets templates.

Downloading the Template

First, let’s get it. Click on the image or its headline

On this next page, you can scroll down, preview the template and get it if you like it. For that, go up and next to the image, locate such a window and press the Edit Template button

As you can see, it says that it will be opened in Google Docs, specifically in Google Slides. And we have a single size which is the common A4, measured 8.3 x 11.7 inches. So, select it

On the next page, we wait till the download starts [10seconds]. The template will be downloaded automatically. However, if something went wrong, just press CLICK HERE, and the download starts

And on the next window, Google Slides will ask you if you want to copy the template to your Google Drive. So yes. To use it, press Make a copy

Wait a bit, and it will open in front of you as a common Google Slides presentation. But now, it is located on your Google Drive. You can edit it, and all changes will be automatically saved on your Drive. Now let’s do something with it

Editing the Template

What we think we better start from is changing the name of the newspaper. Ours will be named Good Old Times, for example

And now it doesn’t actually look good taking too much space, and it’s got over the text. But we can just decrease the font size to make it fit in better. Let’s highlight the text in this text box, go to the top toolbar, to the font size, and click a minus button a few times until it fits. And here it is

But we need to center it. Put your mouse cursor over any border of this text box, and when the cursor turns into a sign with arrows, press-hold the mouse and move it a bit down. There we go. Perfect!

Then, of course, we can edit the paragraphs of the article. But let’s do something related to the presentation format like some basic animations and transitions, for instance

Animating the Object #1

And let’s animate that box with the name that we have just changed to make it appear on the slide in some interesting way.

Select the box figure by pressing anywhere on it. And when it highlights, go to the top toolbar and press Insert there. In the drop-down menu, drag the cursor down to the Animation item and press it as well

Now on the right, we have a Motion controls menu. And the object we are applying it to is still highlighted on the slide

In the motion controls menu below the Object Animations, we have our text box element. And here, we can select the animation and its appearance type, which is On click or After the previous animated element. Since it’s the first element, it will be On click

And for the animation type in this field, we’d like to choose Fly in from left because this is how we just imagine it

Now let’s test our animation by pressing Play below all the items. And let’s click once anywhere on the slide, and the animation will play just as we imagined it. Now we stop it. Cool!

Animating the Object #2

And as you just saw, there's plenty of animations, and you can experiment with different animations for different objects and find what you like.

For instance, we also want this text box with the date to appear in some other way. We select it by pressing Add animation in the controls menu. Then we select Fly in from right

And for the appearance method, we want it to start right after the previous element, after the name. So, we select After previous and press Play

Now we are clicking anywhere on the slide to launch the first animation, and then the second one comes right after it without pressing anything. Nice!

Applying the Transition

Let’s also try with the transition to the second slide.

We will select the second slide on the left. It will get highlighted. And here in the right motion controls menu, below the Slide transition, we are pressing None

And it shows the new menu to select the transition. So, in this field, let it be a simple Dissolve. You can press Play to look at how this animation looks like

Now let’s see what we have in the end. Go to the first slide and press Present in the top right corner. Just 1 click to start it

Animation 1, animation 2, and then click to move to the next slide, which appears with such a Dissolve animation. Great! Here we go!

NB! And you got to know that the possibilities to create and edit the template are limitless, from the text boxes, their font style and size, to animations and transitions, images, and many other options to a total remake to make it look just the way you want. All this can become your completely new work because it’s easier to get a free template and paste your data into it than designing it all on your own from scratch. Fortunately, there are lots of absolutely free templates on https://thegoodocs.com/ for you.

We hope this tutorial will help you learn how to get and use Google Slides templates for free. Good luck!

Written by

Team TheGoodocs

We are a team of creative people who dream of sharing knowledge and making your work and study easier. Our team of professional designers prepares unique free templates. We create handy template descriptions for you to help you choose the most suitable one. On our blog, you'll find step-by-step tutorials on how to use Google Products. And our YouTube channel will show you all the ins and outs of Google products with examples.